


Bit Early For That, Isn't It?

by Radiolaria



Series: Meta Essays [10]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Abandonment, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Archived From Tumblr, Archived From onaperduamedee Blog, F/M, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Guilt, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 05:12:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16927134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: Or that time Sophie’s pettiness hid a story.Reflections on Sophie's past and Nate's alcoholism.





	Bit Early For That, Isn't It?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Apr. 27, 2015 on [onaperduamedee](https://onaperduamedee.tumblr.com/post/117475250738/or-that-time-sophies-pettiness-hid-a).

The way Sophie handles, or rather doesn’t handle, Nate’s alcoholism should have aroused my suspicions: Sophie, with her emotional intelligence and patience, is snappish, unsubtle and seemingly at loss on how to work with an alcoholic.

Granted, Sophie is often a narcissist evil princess who knows what she wants –and she wants the dashing investigator from her dreams-, but she’s also a pro and is aware that for their little Robin Hood project to work like clockwork, the cogs and wheels need maintenance, her reading, coaxing, fixing the people in her team –teaching her trade, having her people’s back, keeping them together. This is how Sophie thinks and, remarkably, cares. 

Except Nate doesn’t work like clockwork, he’s a drunk, and Sophie clearly doesn’t work her magic either. She shields the team from Nate rather than working with him to approach the issue, and the nagging unease is proof of her deadlock. There is this great moment in _The Snow Job_ where Sophie stands up between Nate and Eliot, who, after Nate gambled one time too many with the team’s safety, threatened to skip his “drunk ass off this marble floor.” The team leaves and Sophie is left looking very defeated while trying to talk some sense into Nate.

Sophie, at this point, cannot work her mark when he is an addict.

Let’s jump back to five years before Leverage Incorporated. William was part of Sophie’s life. Husband? Friend? Relative? Sophie keeps her past close to her chest. He was, in her own words, a man she loved, and very much. The only piece of information we get, from Sophie’s “Auntie”, is that he died of a broken heart after Sophie left. And the drink helped. We don’t know if Sophie’s running off lead to the drinking or if the drinking lead to Sophie running off. Whatever the causal link, William ended up dead and Sophie guilty of not being there.

As a grifter, Sophie’s survival depends on her ability to run away. Many circumstances could have forced Sophie to discard Charlotte Prentiss and her life –a life that took seven years of her own. It may have been a crude acceptance of defeat, love, a blind escape, self-preservation, weariness, an act of mercy even. The fact the audience is given no hint as to how badly, or pragmatically, or shamefully she _quit_  tells a lot about her desire to keep this experience boxed away with Charlotte Prentiss. Never to be revisited. (Sophie throws her London stash to the authorities as decoy. Another way to get rid of Charlotte Prentiss.)

Merely, this may have been bailing out. This may have been Sophie not wanting to go out of her way to help someone who loved her, not wanting to experience discomfort, not wanting to stick with William “for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” (yes, I do suspect William was a William Prentiss, and Charlotte’s husband). And this makes suddenly so much worse her impatience with Nate in the first year.

Because oddly, remarkably, despite William in the past, and Nate in the present, despite fumbling and nagging her way through Nate’s path to sobriety, Sophie stayed (probably more for the team than for the continuing disappointment that was her relationship with Nate). Knowing what _could_ happen, would she choose to bail on Nate, was certainly at the back of her mind, always. The pettiness was directed toward Nate as much as herself – you can read on her face during _The_ _King George Job_ that she knows she more than failed William. She made quite a mess of trying to help Nate as well, more judgmental than supportive, but she stayed with Nate and the family they had shaped here. Her Auntie was named Eliot and could kill a man with an appetizer. Perhaps she could be less of a coward, this time around.

And when the team did split up, even if Nate was in a better place emotionally, she must have been checking on him constantly and until the team got back together: she wasn’t surprised when he announced he had quit drinking. Nate was sober, and Sophie ready to move on from him. Except she broke herself. So she ran off, chasing herself across Europe, without Nate. Nate, without Sophie, fell back into the bottle.

This must have been daunting for Sophie. History repeats itself: it was William all over again. Her trust in the team and Tara must have been great, for her to leave Nate in their hands only and to keep away for as long as she did – Sophie needed this time on her own, badly, and she is the queen of self-preservation. It worked. 

What is remarkable about Sophie’s trip is that it genuinely changed her: the first thing she does when she gets a moment with Nate out of prison is _ask_ him about the drinking. There is an edge to her voice – she’s not entirely comfortable, alcoholism is not a game and the team is not a gamble anymore-, but regains control soon enough, conceding that Nate is a thief now: he can save himself. This is the lesson she took from her journey across Europe: _you_ can save yourself, _you_ choose to be someone and live with them.

This time, she is not giving up on Nate. This is Sophie staying _and_ relinquishing part of the hold she wanted to have on Nate –you do not fix the people you love. Safeguard, she is there for him, but not for him only, and not for his addiction only. She doesn’t broach the subject much afterwards, busy surveying Nate becoming a dangerous man –at last, he blends in. But her reading of Nate was correct: he could save himself to a degree, with the drink.

She still has a death on her conscience. She still threatens to walk out if Nate goes out of control. She’s still parcelling, boxing, picking out what she wants. If Sophie can pick who she is, it is harder for her to accept she cannot pick who the person she loves is. Not William. Let him be everybody but William. The man who died of a broken heart. And the drink.

It takes her some time, a confrontation with William’s ghost, the taking over of a small country and Nate’s romantic stronghold, a family of thieves, to say out loud that the team embraces him wholly, including his addiction, and that they will stick with him. She’s telling the truth to his face, without pettiness and holding his hand, while he _drinks._ They are thieves, equals, which means she can change and save herself as well, including from her addiction, her past, her mistakes.

How far she has come, and she’ll stay for good.


End file.
